25 ideas
12772 | Philosophy is a value- and attitude-driven enterprise [Fraassen] |
12771 | Is it likely that a successful, coherent, explanatory ontological hypothesis is true? [Fraassen] |
12773 | Analytic philosophy has an exceptional arsenal of critical tools [Fraassen] |
12770 | We may end up with a huge theory of carefully constructed falsehoods [Fraassen] |
4568 | If 'Queen of England' does not refer if there is no queen, its meaning can't refer if there is one [Cooper,DE] |
4574 | If some peoples do not have categories like time or cause, they can't be essential features of rationality [Cooper,DE] |
14919 | Empiricists deny what is unobservable, and reject objective modality [Fraassen] |
6783 | To 'accept' a theory is not to believe it, but to believe it empirically adequate [Fraassen, by Bird] |
4573 | If it is claimed that language correlates with culture, we must be able to identify the two independently [Cooper,DE] |
4575 | A person's language doesn't prove their concepts, but how are concepts deduced apart from language? [Cooper,DE] |
14917 | To accept a scientific theory, we only need to believe that it is empirically adequate [Fraassen] |
20653 | Six reduction levels: groups, lives, cells, molecules, atoms, particles [Putnam/Oppenheim, by Watson] |
6784 | Why should the true explanation be one of the few we have actually thought of? [Fraassen, by Bird] |
12769 | Inference to best explanation contains all sorts of hidden values [Fraassen] |
13066 | An explanation is just descriptive information answering a particular question [Fraassen, by Salmon] |
12768 | We accept many scientific theories without endorsing them as true [Fraassen] |
4561 | Many sentences set up dispositions which are irrelevant to the meanings of the sentences [Cooper,DE] |
4564 | I can meaningfully speculate that humans may have experiences currently impossible for us [Cooper,DE] |
4565 | The verification principle itself seems neither analytic nor verifiable [Cooper,DE] |
4563 | 'How now brown cow?' is used for elocution, but this says nothing about its meaning [Cooper,DE] |
4562 | Most people know how to use the word "Amen", but they do not know what it means [Cooper,DE] |
4571 | Reference need not be a hit-or-miss affair [Cooper,DE] |
4566 | Any thesis about reference is also a thesis about what exists to be referred to [Cooper,DE] |
4572 | If predicates name things, that reduces every sentence to a mere list of names [Cooper,DE] |
4576 | An analytic truth is one which becomes a logical truth when some synonyms have been replaced [Cooper,DE] |